Get a jolt of Hudson artist Dennis Knecht at the Coffee Loft

By Chris Bergeron, Daily News Correspondent

Sunday

Jul 29, 2018 at 3:00 AM

MARLBOROUGH - At the Coffee Loft, owner Jaclyn Musorofiti has packed the menu with organic coffees, tasty pastries and a Green Monster sandwich with goat cheese to go along with Dennis Knecht’s visionary paintings on the side.

Hanging on the walls, the Hudson artist’s vivid acrylics and oils come in many flavors from psychedelic abstraction to symbolic Cubism and Pop Art that provides a caffeine-like jolt of brilliant colors and surreal imagery.

In the hypnotic “One Man Band,” a musician who resembles David Bowie from another galaxy plays keyboard, guitar and drums. In the even more surreal “Nothin’ New Under the Moon,” three pelicans protect cracked eggs beneath a luminous night sky.

As if created in collaboration between Pablo Picasso and a Stone Age cave painter, the figures in “See Me, Feel Me” do just that as if at a Who concert.

“I’m inspired by music, dreams, visions and my own feelings,” explained Knecht, a Vietnam-era Army veteran and longtime Hudson resident.

“When people look at my art, I hope they see something they haven’t seen before.”

With intriguing titles like “Red Aliens,” “The Fallen Angels” and “Soul of a Warrior,” Knecht’s 12 works comprise the largest portion of an ongoing exhibit, organized by Musorofiti, that also features works by several other local artists. All are for sale.

Mostly self-taught, Knecht said he has painted in most modern styles except for realism and portraiture.

Preparing her casework, attorney Katie Perry-Lorentz was dazzled by the originality of Knecht’s acrylic “One Man Band” hanging on a nearby wall.

“I like the very vibrant colors. The artist has brought so much energy,” observed the public defender for the Youth Advocacy Division of Worcester. “I really like its texture. It’s a little whimsical but not too fanciful.”

Since buying the Coffee Loft in October 2017, Musorofiti said, she wanted to build the current, ongoing show around Knecht’s striking paintings.

“I think Dennis’ art really brightens up the Coffee Loft. It has received very positive comments from our customers,” she said.

Other artists in the exhibit include Jane Moore Houghton and Catherine M. Weber who are showing and selling artful renderings of plants and insects and encaustic paintings on wood, respectfully.

Elisa Sweig is showing a lovely mixed media painting of “Fireflies” and Emily Long is displaying a bright acrylic painting of “Cacti.”

Knecht has spent much of his life in a solitary pursuit of his muse that has brought personal satisfaction but modest financial rewards.

“I’m not a businessman. I don’t know how to sell things,” he said.

Over the last several years, he has won several awards from the Florida-based Light, Space & Time Online Art Gallery.

Growing up in Belleville, Illinois, Knecht taught himself to draw and then paint from a series of “cheap art books” he bought and by later studying the works of Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Braque and Joan Miro, whom he admired for their imaginative styles.

He stressed he still admires them as mentors but “I don’t try to imitate them.”

“I’m still driven by their examples and a desire to get better and better and keep evolving,” Knecht said. “I’m driven to be more expressive, to be more colorful and to create more beautiful forms.”

He served eight years as a military police officer in the U.S. and Okinawa, Japan, achieving the rank of staff sergeant. After he was honorably discharged in 1978, he worked in Houston, Texas, before marrying Vera Mildred Knecht, his wife of 46 years and moving east.

Over the years, Knecht has exhibited his work in the Post Road Art Center, the Harvest Café, the Denault Gallery in Maynard, Hudson Town Hall, Framingham Library, the Beacon Hill office of a state senator and other venues.

In recent years, Knecht has continued to paint despite serious health problems including a long battle with cancer.

Now 64, he devotes himself to painting, writing poetry and enjoying vintage music.

Composed with a mix of freeflowing images and frank sincerity, Knecht’s poems try to make sense of life’s turmoil, and grapple with injustice and profess love for his wife.

“I hope people look at my art and see something they can’t find in a museum,” he said. “Art has kept me going all these years.”